Barack Obama Movie List 2019: Where to Stream Obama’s Favorite Movies and TV Shows

The end of the year can only mean one thing: it’s time for President Barack Obama to reveal his favorite movies and TV shows of the year (what, you don’t wait around all year for Obama’s list?). On Sunday, Obama released his annual list of movies and shows, and this year, it seems that the former president spent plenty of time perusing Netflix. Of the 21 titles on Obama’s 2019 list — 18 movies and three shows — five are Netflix Originals, including Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson’s Marriage Story, and true crime drama Unbelievable. Not bad, Netflix, not bad.

As with all of his playlists, Obama’s 2019 movie list does a solid job representing the year in entertainment. Of course, there are plenty of Oscars heavyweights featured, including The Irishman, Ford v Ferrari, Parasite, and Little Women, but he also included some under-appreciated films, like Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace and Senegalese romance Atlantics.

Obama also included American Factory, an Oscar-shortlisted documentary produced by his production company, Higher Ground, with wife Michelle Obama. “It’s our first offering in partnership with Netflix, and I’m excited about the other projects we’ve got in the works,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

This year’s Obama movie list was praised by film critics — Decider’s own Anna Menta joked that outlets should “hire Barack Obama to write your end of year lists” — so if you’re interested in getting ahead in your Oscars pool, the president’s list is a good starting point. To that end, here’s how to stream every movie (and the three TV shows he considers “as powerful as movies”) on Barack Obama’s movie list, from Birds of Passage to Booksmart to that Fleabag Obama scene, as well as their official descriptions (per Reelgood).

BARACK OBAMA MOVIE LIST 2019: WHERE TO STREAM ALL THE MOVIES AND SHOWS

AMERICAN FACTORY

Where to Stream: Netflix

Official Description: In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

AMAZING GRACE

Where to Stream: Hulu

Official Description: A behind-the-scenes documentary about the recording of Aretha Franklin’s best-selling album finally sees the light of day more than four decades after the original footage was shot.

APOLLO 11

Where to Stream: Hulu

Official Description: A look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin.

ASH IS PUREST WHITE

Where to Stream: Kanopy, Amazon Prime Video (for rent or purchase)

Official Description: Set in China’s underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.

ATLANTICS

Where to Stream: Netflix

Official Description: Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Where to Stream: HBO

Official Description: During the marihuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.

BOOKSMART

Where to Stream: Hulu

Official Description: Two academic teenage superstars realize, on the eve of their high school graduation, that they should have worked less and played more. Determined to never fall short of their peers, the girls set out on a mission to cram four years of fun into one night.

DIANE

Where to Stream: Hulu

Official Description: Diane is a devoted friend and caretaker, particularly to her drug-addicted son. But as those around her begin to drift away in the last quarter of her life, she is left to reckon with past choices and long-dormant memories.

THE FAREWELL

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video (for rent or purchase)

Official Description: A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family’s decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.

FORD V FERRARI

Where to Stream: N/A (currently in theaters)

Official Description: American car designer Carroll Shelby and the British-born driver Ken Miles work together to battle corporate interference, the laws of physics, and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company and take on the dominating race cars of Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.

THE IRISHMAN

Where to Stream: Netflix

Official Description: Pennsylvania, 1956. Frank Sheeran, a war veteran of Irish origin who works as a truck driver, accidentally meets mobster Russell Bufalino. Once Frank becomes his trusted man, Bufalino sends him to Chicago with the task of helping Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful union leader related to organized crime, with whom Frank will maintain a close friendship for nearly twenty years.

JUST MERCY

Where to Stream: Available for pre-order on Vudu

Official Description: The powerful true story of Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who goes to Alabama to defend the disenfranchised and wrongly condemned — including Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death despite evidence proving his innocence. Bryan fights tirelessly for Walter with the system stacked against them.

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

Official Description: Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.

LITTLE WOMEN

Where to Stream: N/A (currently in theaters)

Official Description: Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.

MARRIAGE STORY

Where to Stream: Netflix

Official Description: A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.

PARASITE

Where to Stream: N/A (available for rent or purchase on January 14)

Official Description: All unemployed, Ki-taek’s family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

THE SOUVENIR

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

Official Description: A shy but ambitious film student begins to find her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with a charismatic but untrustworthy man. She defies her protective mother and concerned friends as she slips deeper and deeper into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship that comes dangerously close to destroying her dreams.

TRANSIT

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

Official Description: In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.

FLEABAG: SEASON 2

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

Official Description: As she hurls herself headlong at modern living, Fleabag is thrown roughly up against the walls of contemporary London, sleeping with anyone who dares to stand too close, squeezing money from wherever she can, rejecting anyone who tries to help her, and keeping up her bravado throughout.

UNBELIEVABLE

Where to Stream: Netflix

Official Description: A teenager is charged with lying about her rape allegation, but two determined investigative female detectives discover a far more sinister truth.

WATCHMEN

Where to Stream: HBO

Official Description: Set in an alternate history where “superheroes” are treated as outlaws, “Watchmen” embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel while attempting to break new ground of its own.